Stray
by Lotos-Eater
Summary: [Incomplete & discontinued.] Ed's preBebop wanderings.
1. Chapter 1

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**1**

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The sun was beginning to go down on the desert. The raw, seemingly dead earth was blooming into vibrant color with the last light. Standing on the doorstep of her house, a stucco shack in the reconstructed town of Mesa Verde, New Mexico, Colleen Esterhas studied the long road that stretched out across the desert from Mesa Verde to all places north. There wasn't a soul on it.

The last parent should have come and gone hours ago, when all the others had appeared for their brood. But the last parent had yet to show up.

She sighed, deeply troubled, and ambled back into the house and all the way through to the backyard. She was a large, motherly woman who kept her hair cut short and never wore anything but jeans. Fashion didn't pay in her business.

The backyard was a fenced-in playground on the hard-packed desert earth. There was a sandbox, a swingset, a much maligned Joshua tree that currently held a flock of "ornaments" inexpertly made from construction paper and glue, a few tricycles, and toy trucks of varying sizes. Maria Stamos, Colleen's only employee, was currently walking about the yard and picking the trucks up one by one. "Any sign of him?" Maria asked.

"Neither hide nor hair," Colleen said.

"He did say he'd be coming back for her, didn't he?"

"Actually, he didn't say much at all," Colleen said. "He just smiled, patted her on the head and gave me a wave goodbye. Didn't seem like he was all there, to tell you the truth." He hadn't been a local like most of the parents who used their daycare center. He had just swooped in in his weird amphibious vehicle and pushed the child at her, saying that he was in a hurry because something big had just landed. "Seemed a few bricks shy of a load, if you know what I mean," she added.

"I think it must run in the family," Maria answered.

"Where is she now?"

"Inside. I locked her in the activity room."

"Maria!"

"Well, I let her loose before, and you know what she did? She took apart the satellite communicator! She didn't have a screwdriver or anything, she just unscrewed all the parts with a pair of scissors and her teeth!" Maria was so worked up she actually dropped a few trucks. "She's like a little animal. The other kids don't seem to like her, either."

"Well, it looks like we might be stuck with her for a bit," Colleen said with a sigh. She turned from Maria and went back into the house. Sure enough, the activity room was locked. Colleen opened it and stepped in. The first thing she saw was the puff of red hair in the middle of the floor. That was where a skinny little body in denim overalls and a white tee-shirt sprawled out, face down, so completely enthralled with what she was scribbling on the tiles that she didn't even notice Colleen's presence. Colleen thought about yelling, but lectures didn't seem to work on this one. Curious, she tiptoed over to see what the little girl was writing. It didn't make any sense to her. It looked like some kind of math.

"Looks like you'll be staying with us, at least for the night, kiddo," Colleen said.

"Okay Mommy-lady-person," the little girl replied, not even looking up.

Colleen stared with her hands on her hips, wondering if what she had heard was really what she had heard. "You know perfectly well I'm not your mother," she said.

"Right-o, Mommy-lady-person," the girl said, still scribbling away.

"Do you have any idea where your real mother lives, sweetie? Is there some way we can contact her?"

"Mama doesn't live anywhere," the girl said.

"You've got to have a home somewhere," Colleen reasoned.

"Mama doesn't live there," she answered in a singsong voice. "Mama doesn't live here, Mama doesn't live there, Mama doesn't live anywhere, Mama doesn't live."

"Ah," Colleen said awkwardly. "I'm very sorry to hear that."

"Where's Papa?" the little girl asked, as if she'd already forgotten what she had just said.

"That does seem to be the question of the hour, doesn't it?" Colleen said to herself. "Your name is Francoise, is that right?"

"Hmmmm, Francoise," the girl said. She started to invent a song about it. "Francoise, Francoise, bonjour Papá, c'est Francoise, je no se quas…"

Colleen took that as a "yes." _A few bricks shy of a load all right, _she thought. The writing on the tiles seemed to have gone from the strange math to a language of letters and numbers, and the girl was clearly more concerned with that than she was worried about her father. Colleen shook her head.

--

**Author's Note. This is part of a looooong story I started a few years ago and never finished. If you have interest I will post more.**


	2. Chapter 2

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**2**

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A week later, Colleen and Maria watched from the front stoop as the official Earth Social Services zipcraft lifted off from the road. "Ah well. I guess that's over and done with," Colleen said, but her forehead was lined with concern. The girl had been with them for only seven days, but Colleen had a sixth sense when it came to children. She knew that this was no ordinary one, and she was worried what the world would do to her.

"And I was just getting used to her. I almost liked her a little, you know?" Maria said. "Until she took apart the computer, that is. God, what a mess."

"At least we'll be able to keep food in the fridge again," Colleen said ruefully, watching the Social Services craft disappear into the sky.

-

_Earth Social Services district 327 juvenile hall underground facilities, North America._

Alice Murphy had a difficult job to begin with. She didn't need oddballs like this making it even more complicated. She had a whole dormitory of six-to-eight-year-olds to look after. That was her personal hell: the six-to-eight-year-old group. She had been stuck here, she was convinced, because of a personal vendetta that Marnie, the Social Services director, had against her. Actually it wouldn't have mattered much which division she was put in charge of, because Alice hated all children pretty equally. It hadn't started out like that. She had once been a starry-eyed idealist who wanted to give the kids of the world a great big hug. Now she was wiser.

The foster parents in front of her looked frazzled and very upset. The wife merely sat with her legs crossed and her mouth closed. The husband's face was bright red. "She's like an animal! She can't talk plain English, she doesn't listen to anything we tell her, she's up all hours of the night…"

"Now, Mr. Shaw, you know that she's had a hard time…"

"I don't care! You should see the virus that's on my computers right now! All because of _her! _I had to completely revamp the enitre operating system! I don't even know what she _did _to that thing, but she goes on it when I tell her not to and goes who-knows-where…"

"And we _told _her to stay away from Mommy and Daddy's things," the wife said suddenly.

"That's _right! _She just runs around the place pretending like we don't even exist! And she got into my old radio collection and completely destroyed everything - I came in and there were circuits lying everywhere…"

"That's quite enough, Mr. Shaw," Alice said through gritted teeth. "You may leave now. We're sorry it didn't work out."

"_Sorry? _You people owe me compensation for property damage!"

Thirty minutes later they were finally gone. Alice paged the office assistant downstairs and had the redhead herded up. She really _didn't _listen to anything she was told, Alice had noted. She seemed to live on her own planet, walking around as if all the people around her were merely animals and not worthy of her regard. A Special Needs kid if there ever was one, Alice thought, but somehow the psychologists didn't think she qualified for the Special Needs department, and so Alice was still stuck with her.

Because the building was located underground - government buildings generally were, because building anything on the surface was an insurance problem - the kids in juvenile hall typically didn't see the sunlight too often. Still, this twig of a girl managed to retain her tan. She might have been in the middle of the jungle, or outer space, for all that she seemed to notice. _Attention Deficit, _Alice thought. "Now, Francoise," Alice began in her falsely sweet voice, trying not to talk through her teeth. "This is the third perfectly suitable foster home you've had problems with. Have you got anything to say for yourself, dearie?"

The seven-year-old seemed to be engrossed in something on the wall, but suddenly she said, "Mean-man's computer was toooooo sloooooooow. Francoise was fixing it."

"You know you weren't supposed to go near their things, Francoise. That was very naughty of you."

Francoise seemed upset. She pertly crossed her arms over her skinny chest and stuck her nose up in the air. (She didn't like being smacked around, yelled at, told to wear clothes and shoes all the time - and the Shaws had been noisy. If she was up all hours of the night it was only because that's when they did their yelling. And, more importantly, Mean-man's server was always down!) "Francoise didn't like it with them. Francoise is glad she's back with Alice-lady."

"That's _Miss Murphy, _if you don't mind," Alice said, beginning to lose her temper. "And I don't _care _if you don't like it! I'm sick of having to deal with you! If you would just behave yourself and listen to adults and above all _stop taking things apart _then maybe some crazy family would actually consider _keeping _you. Can't you get that through your thick little skull?" she yelled. She was standing, leaning over her desk now, and Francoise was cringing in her chair. Alice's fingers itched. She would dearly love to smack this kid in the head, but unfortunately her office was monitored by camera. Discipline, she thought grudgingly, was not even allowed to take place in her office. In the dormitory, at night, it was a different story, however. Maybe there would be time for a proper punishment later.

"Repeat after me," Alice said, carefully sitting back down and trying to soften the fury that was bubbling up inside. "Foster parenting is an act of charity."

"Foster parenting is an act of charity," Francoise mimicked. She had an uncanny ability for sounding very much like Alice when she wanted to, which was irking, but Alice blew it aside for now.

"And people like the Shaws deserve thanks and respect."

Francoise yawned. "And people like the Shaws deserve thanks and respect."

"And in the future I will do my best to show them that respect."

"And in the futureFrancoise will do Francoise's best…"

"_I. _I said _I. _Not _Francoise! _Try it again._"_

"And in the future Francoise…"

"_No. _Will you _listen _to me, you brainless little twit?"

Francoise recrossed her arms and stuck her tan nose in the air.

_Oh, she's going to get it later, _Alice thought venomously…

-

Later that night, Francoise was running through the darkened underground building. She had taken to the stairs. Alice-lady was absolutely no match for Francoise when it came to running and climbing, and Francoise had gleefully left the poor huffing woman far behind. She decided to run to the top of the stairs for two reasons: to see where they went, and because she was sure that Alice-lady wouldn't bother going after her if stairs were involved.

At the top of the stairs there was a door. Francoise burst through it and was greeted by the oddest sight: the night sky, glittering with stars, streaked again and again by the hot white paths of dozens of meteors. No moon was in sight, so the star field was absolutely ablaze. Around her on the ground she could just about make out the skeletons of buildings and the ghostly bones of what remained of a monorail track. It looked like a horrendous, complex maze of decaying cement and steel.

It looked, to her, like it would be a fun place to play.

"So long, mean-Alice-lady-person," she sang happily, skipping off into the night.

--

**Once again, I haven't finished it, but there's more where this came from if you want it.**


	3. Chapter 3

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**3**

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They called them the Underground Highways. There were a lot of them on Earth. They were mostly found in the places that had once been urban centers, where there was plenty of excess material lying around just waiting to be scavenged, and where convenient train tunnels already existed. Some people honestly believed that if you had a bit of sturdy cement over your head at all times, it would be a protection against any falling meteors. They believed this even though you could look up and see the sunlight coming through the cracks in the tunnel roof in places. People built homes, tents, little shacks where they sold fried fish wrapped in newspaper, convenience stores, police stations… here, under the domed roof, they constructed a new world with whatever was left over from the last one.

It was a small city, really. In some places the wealthier ones sat around little café tables and talked about moving to Mars and leaving this wreck of a planet behind them. In other places you could find groups of haggard men gathered around little fires, roasting rats.

When Francoise had stepped off the ship she had stowed away on, she had wandered from the dock entrance to the clean-looking streets (a poster in one office window read, "Help rebuild the planet with Xeno Corp! Bring the latest satellite technology down to Earth!") to the working factories to the miles where everyday people lived, breathed, bathed, sold food, and generally went on living like people do regardless of what planet they're on.

For days now she had been creeping around and stealing whatever food she could get her hands on. Unfortunately, capable runner though she was, she was starting to make a name for herself in one stretch of the tunnel. With her bright red head and the fact that she was seven years old and wandering around on her own without any kind of guardian, she kind of stuck out in a crowd. So now she had taken to the darker parts of the Underground Highway, and tonight she found herself drawn to the smell of cooking meat.

The three men were pretty well shielded by the tent walls they had constructed out of old linens held together by duct tape. There was no roof to the tent and no reason for it - the roof of the tunnel high above was protection from the elements, and a tent roof would just hold in the smoke. In the center of their construction a fire was glowing, and just over it Franklin was turning a skewer of two whole chickens. Beans in a pot next to the fire bubbled with heat. "They done yet?" Pilon asked.

"Be patient," Franklin said.

"Can't we at least start on the beans?" Judd wheedled. He was perched on an overturned crate, which gave him easy viewing of the fire and the food.

"What did I just say?"

"Aw, come on, Frank…"

"AAAAH!" Judd cried.

The other two looked over, startled. Judd was staring at the redheaded kid who had suddenly appeared next to his crate. His - or maybe her, it was hard to tell - mouth was wide open and he was staring at the skewered, dripping chicken with drool slowly ebbing out of his - or her - mouth.

"Where the hell did he come from?"

"I don't know! I just turned around and there he was! Hey - hey, you, kid, get out of here! This is our fire!"

The kid just kept staring at the chicken. The three men just kept staring at the kid.

"Maybe he's hungry," Pilon said.

"It's _our _chicken," Judd said angrily. "_Our _hard-earned chicken!"

"Hard-earned stolen chicken," Franklin added.

"Whatever - it's _ours! _Now you get out of here before I bash your skull in, you got it?"

The kid didn't move. He seemed to be pretty single minded. Judd got up from his seat on the ground, leaned over, and raised his heavy, thick arm over the kid's head. The kid still didn't stop staring. Judd just stood there with his arm raised, feeling like an idiot. "Aw, come on, kid, get lost!"

When the kid didn't move this time, Judd, grumbling, picked him up by the back of his overalls with one arm (the kid didn't have too much meat on him), lifted him into the air and pushed him through the tent flap, dropping him outside with no ceremony. He walked back to the fire, brushing his hands. "This place is crawling with runaways. They're like rodents."

"We could've given him some beans or something," Pilon grumbled. "He was only a little kid."

"Aw, shut up. Frank, when's that chicken gonna be done?"

"Be patient."

They said boredly, staring at the glistening meat with rumbling stomachs for a few minutes. Then Judd looked down beside his seat again. "GAH! What the - didn't I just tell you to get lost? Aw, shit."

The eyes of bright orange head were transfixed on the slowly revolving meat above the fire. He seemed completely unaware of Judd's comments.

"Let 'im have some beans," Pilon said.

"There's only enough for three of us!"

"He's just a little kid. How much can he eat?"

"No one eats around here who doesn't earn it," Franklin said.

The other two men were suddenly silent. Frank rarely said anything that didn't need to be said, and Frank never joked around. He was the odd, quiet one of the gang. When he spoke, the other two listened. Judd looked surprised. Pilon looked utterly confused.

Frank turned to the orange-haired kid, sizing him up. His age was hard to tell - he couldn't have been more than six or seven at most, but beyond that it was impossible to say. His face and clothes were filthy like a real street rat's - the tee-shirt underneath the denim overalls might have been white once, but once again it was hard to tell. Obviously this kid was on his own. Hopefully an adult wouldn't leave someone like that on purpose, filthy and hungry with matted hair that was probably crawling with lice. Of course Frank himself wasn't much different, but his state of hygiene was a matter of choice, more or less. At least he had been raised to know better.

Still, Frank wasn't really a man known for his charity. He didn't want to ruin his reputation.

He leaned down so that his face was close to the kid's and put on a stubbornly blank expression. "You heard me now, kid. Don't pretend you didn't. If you want to eat this food, you've got to be prepared to earn it. You have to do whatever I tell you to do. If you follow through, you can eat. Understand?"

The… boy looked at Frank solemnly, licking his lips. He nodded. Pilon still looked concerned, but Judd seemed satisfied.

"All right, kid," Frank said, sitting back up but not breaking eye contact. "This chicken's going to take five more minutes to cook. I'll let you have some if for that entire five minutes… you can stand on your hands."

Judd and Pilon watched with apprehension. No one seemed to move at first, but all eyes were on the redhead. Slowly, carefully, he stood up. He backed away from the fire. He was totally concentrated now, ignoring the presence of the three men. Hesitantly he bent over and put his hands down on the cement ground in front of him. He leaned forward and kicked up his legs, but ended up landing back down on his bare little feet. He kept trying to kick them up over his head, but his moves were hesitant - he was afraid to lose balance and go toppling forward. Just when they thought he was going to give up for sure, he managed to lift his legs up directly over his spine, but his skinny arms shook unsteadily under the weight and it was only a few seconds before he toppled forward with a grunt.

Pilon looked to Franklin. "Er… that was five minutes, wasn't it, Frank?"

Franklin rubbed his chin, looking dubious. "Well, I don't know. Haven't got a watch. What do you think, Judd? Was that five minutes?"

Judd looked sullen and maligned. But he said, "Well, I guess so."

After the meal, Pilon dug out what was left of a stolen stash of red wine for their dessert and they sat around the trash-fed fire, drinking out of jam jars and laughing at the kid's continued attempts to stand on his hands. At some point in the evening Judd noted, "Hey, you know who he looks like? With the orange hair?"

"Who's that?"

"Edward! You know, old Ed?"

"Oh sure, Edward. Yeah, I guess you're right…" Pilon said.

"You mean the _dog_?" Frank interjected.

"Yeah. You remember, the um, spaniel… retriever… what was he, anyway?"

"One hundred percent purebred mutt," Franklin said.

"Right."

For some reason, it stuck.

--

**I have to respect the people that review my other stories asking for an update on this one. You know who you are! And though I am vaguely threatened, I am equally grateful. I am such a lazy bum without the encouragement. I should have more up this weekend if all goes well.**

**Once again a warning: I wrote this a long time ago and never finished the story. As it stands, it's about 12,000 words, and it's certainly not complete. Read at your own risk. **


	4. Chapter 4

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**4**

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Franklin's gang was well known, for better or worse, in his end of the highway, so they often went further afield to look for food. Some places they stole from so often that they were practically considered regular customers. Sometimes they picked up the odd job, but in their district, at least for men in their crowd, no one was too willing to offer regular work.

Franklin made it clear from the beginning - miraculously, without even saying a word about it - that Edward was to earn his keep just like the rest of them. Everyone accepted this without reserve. Franklin still had the sneaking suspicion that he was engaging in charity, but after a short while even this fear disippated. The kid turned out to be more of an asset than a liability. He washed his face once and all of a sudden market wives from one end of the highway to the other were giving him handouts, especially once he got really good at walking on his hands. Judd happily gave up "working" entirely and spent his energy figuring out how to get his hands on some wine - something that people just didn't seem to want to give a seven-year-old. Pilon liked to let the kid tag along with him and show him off to the ladies. Edward, for his part, seemed content to follow after Pilon like a puppy.

They - Franklin, at least - figured out pretty quickly that Edward wasn't just another street kid. It might have been the way he tended to scratch secret codes on the pavement with the sooty end of a stick from the fire, or the way he tended to dig bits of electronics out of the rubbish heaps and treat them like playthings. One day they discovered that Edward could read, and this was a huge revelation - it meant Franklin's gang finally had a member who was literate. Their street status skyrocketed.

At night they would pool their gathered resources by the fire, Franklin would cook, and then they would happily get drunk on whatever Judd had managed to acquire while the kid watched with fascination. Sometimes other friends joined them - sometimes even ladies - and then they would have the kid show off his gymnastics. It wasn't long before he had picked up other assorted skills like balancing on one hand or walking around upside-down and picking stuff up with his toes. The audience was always appreciative - especially after a certain amount of wine.

When the wine had gone to everyone's heads and the fire had died down low enough and the guests had all been shown the doorflap, Pilon, Judd, and Franklin would each settle down on their piles of discarded clothes and other salvaged bedding, and Edward would just flop over on whatever spot he had happened to land and begin to snore.

--

It went on like that for months. It might have been a year, more than a year, or even less - it was hard to say. No one in Franklin's end of the Underground Highway kept very close track of time. They knew when Francine was baking bread and when Kee the butcher seven stories down was not going to be watching his stockroom; these were the important things to remember. Calendars were just so many useless bits of paper, especially if you couldn't read them.

There was one next to the window of Francine Athar's bakery, though. Her building was constructed out of tin, a few lucky boards, and copious amounts of duct tape, but you wouldn't know it from the taste of her bread. Even bigshots from the smarmy districts (where a building might be entirely made out of one material) came down here for Francine's bread. For this reason, among others, she was a favorite of Pilon's, although he usually visited later in the day without Edward on those occasions when he knew Mr. Athar would not be around. That was why Francine wasn't too familiar with Edward's place in the world.

"What does her calendar say today is?" Pilon asked Edward.

"Calendar says: today is June fifth. Yesterday was June fourth, tomorrow is going to be June sixth, and next week it's Junes seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth…"

"The calendar tells you all that?" Pilon asked skeptically. He stared at Francine's calendar. It had looked exactly the same but according to Edward had said something completely different less than a month ago. Frankly, he didn't trust it.

Francine came to her window ledge, where most people put down money for her bread. But when she saw who it was she knew better than to expect money. "You again!"

"Francine, bellisima, haven't you got a few crumbs to spare for this poor little one?" Pilon said, pouting his lip and pulling Edward to his side - easy enough, considering how engrossed Edward appeared to be in the streaks of light coming through the tunnel ceiling above.

Francine smiled at Edward, but her gaze on Pilon was like daggers. "Hmmph! Don't think I don't know what goes on in that tent at night. You brutes starve that poor child and take all the bread I give her for yourself."

"Now, that's not true," Pilon said, preparing himself for a good debate. He paused for a moment, unnerved by something she had said - but then he couldn't figure out what it was, so he went on: "I can promise you that we all…"

"You ought to be ashamed, the way you treat the poor thing - like a dog more than a kid. Come here, Edward," Francine beckoned, holding out a bagel. Edward, spotting food, lunged for it with her teeth, then sat herself down on the street with her back against Francine's wall and began to gnaw. Meanwhile Francine opened her bakery door, reached over, and placed a hand on Edward's head. Edward didn't even seem to notice. "Just look at this," Francine admonished Pilon, wriggling her hand around in Ed's hair. "It's a rat's nest. You could at least give her a brush now and then. Why, you hardly know she's a girl."

Pilon laughed out loud. "A girl! Edward's not a girl!"

"Isn't she?" Francine said, her tone infuriatingly knowing.

"Well… no…" Pilon said, suddenly uncertain.

"Oh? Have you ever seen her go to the bathroom?"

Pilon shook his head slowly. A dull horror was beginning to dawn on him.

"Look here, just ask her. Edward, aren't you a girl, dearie?"

Edward, with a mouth full of bagel, nodded.

Pilon was thunderstruck. "You never _told _us you were a girl!"

Edward grinned. "Pilon-person never asked," she said, spitting half-chewed dough everywhere.

When he brought her home to Franklin's tent that evening, Pilon shared the terrible news with his comrades and pointed in horror at the stubby pigtail braids that had been put into her hair by Francine (after much struggle). Judd was equally appalled. "A girl! All this time, and he didn't even say anything! Edward, I'm shocked. I knew you were trouble right from the beginning. Frank, what are we going to do?"

Frank, who seemed strangely bemused after the initial shock, said, "Nothing. We can't help who she is."

"But think of it!" Pilon cried. "She's a little girl now! We can't just let her sleep on the floor anymore."

"We can't make her get all our food, either," Judd moaned.

"What'll we do? We have to feed her and clothe her and give her a place to sleep…"

"Why should we?" Frank asked complacently. "She was a girl yesterday too, only you didn't know it."

Pilon and Judd stared, simply not understanding how Franklin was unable to grasp this new moral dilemma.

"Think of it this way," Franklin said with fatherly patience. "Would your average grocer on the street be _more _or _less _likely to give anything away to a little girl with pigtails than a little boy with a dirty face?"

Judd and Pilon thought about it.

"You know, he has a point…" Judd said.

In the end the pigtails stayed - and were rather productive - but they did make a bed for her, and they gave her her own corner of the tent where she could store her stockpile of especially interesting electronics from the trash heaps. By now she had a monitor, a giant dinosaur of one, and had hooked it up to a box of wires. It gave her somewhere new to scrawl the secret languages she used to write all over the walls and floor.

And Pilon tried to give her a doll once, but she just took it apart with her teeth.

--

Everything ended the day the meteor crashed through the roof of their Underground Highway. It happened not far from the docks, and the actual wreckage it caused didn't affect the people bedded down in Franklin's end. It was the fire that followed that was the chief cause of death for most of the inhabitants. Hundreds died - thousands, maybe. It was hard to say. The people who lived in Franklin's neighborhood were not much better at census-taking than they were at keeping track of the date with a calendar.

In the chaos that ensued that night, in the running, screaming masses of people, in the dense fog of smoke and dust - Franklin's gang was scattered. Judd didn't know what had happened. Pilon had screamed that he was going after Francine, although why he would expect her to be in her bakery was anybody's guess. Franklin, the staid leader, had simply vanished along the way. Without him, Judd was rudderless. Even in the next days when the refugee camps were being set up, there was no sight of him, Pilon, or Francine. It seemed that all that remained of the gang was Judd and Edward. "Where did Frank-man go?" she asked him, confused. "Did Pilon-person find Francy-lady?"

"I don't know, kid," he told her honestly.

He had nothing else to tell her until the next day. That was when the airships started coming in to bring supplies to the thousands of refugees, many of whom tried desperately to climb on board whenever the ships were close enough to the ground. Things had been getting ugly in the camp, but the relief workers said they were only taking away the injured.

That was when Judd said to her: "All right kid, it's been fun, but it's high time we unloaded you. No hard feelings." He said this as he picked her up bodily, tucked her under his arm, and started pushing through the crowd to the supply ship that was landing nearby. Edward was perplexed.

"This is just the way it has to be," he said. "Frank, he might be mad when he sees you're gone, but I'll just have to tell him it was for the best. I can't have you tagging along after me everywhere, getting in the way. And Pilon, he's got too much heart and not enough brain. I'll have to break it to him slow. But the truth is we just can't let you hold us back anymore. We weren't cut out for this. You're not ours, you know? But it's been fun. Don't forget us right away, okay?"

"Okay Judd-person," she said, confused.

She was being handed up to a man on the edge of a platform on a noisy ship. The man looked at Edward and then down at Judd. "Don't you want to come with us, sir?" he asked.

"Nah," Judd said.

"The gash in your leg, it looks like it's festering…"

"Just a scratch," Judd said. "Take this one, she got a nasty knock on the head."

--

Edward knew instinctively that she was on her own again. In the confused mess of the hospital, with nurses rushing around everywhere and patients lining the corridors, she was able to amble out quite easily. She did take a detour around their central monitoring station, where she used a computer terminal to blissfully surf the net for a few hours, but she was kicked out of there by an orderly.

She wandered down by the ocean. She didn't know where she was anymore in respect to the Highway, but since people were saying that there wasn't anything left of the Highway anyway it didn't seem to matter. It was sad that she couldn't follow Pilon around anymore, but deep down she understood that Judd was right. Frank and Pilon and Judd didn't need her around anymore if the Highway was gone. Now they were branching out onto different paths. This was the natural course of life, she knew.

More importantly, where could she find a computer?

Down by the bay there was a settlement of people, but they were all very wealthy. To Edward, wealthy meant they stuck their noses up and gave you nothing, or else they tried to catch you. Neither of these things were desireable, even if they all had access to the net. So she was having trouble getting her hands on food. But then one day the breeze shifted, and her nose picked up the tantalizing scent of fish chowder.

--


End file.
